Thou, O my country, hast thy foolish ways, Too apt to purr at every stranger's praise!

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?

It is the peculiarity of the bore that he is the last person to find himself out.

Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

The man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be tedious at times.

What the mulberry leaf is to the silkworm, the author's book, treatise, essay, poem, is to the critical larvae that feed upon it. It furnishes them with food and clothing.

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think.

Most persons have died before they expire-died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.